This past week saw probably my favorite episode of Frieren yet (Episode 7). That show keeps delivering each and every week. I went back and re-read part of the source to see how far it has adapted so far and the current episode ended partway through chapter 15. So, that means that they have only adapted 14.5 manga chapters in 7 full episodes. For some perspective, the most recent Frieren chapter published was 115. Incredible show with probably one of my favorite EDs in recent memory. If you have yet to check it out, I cannot recommend it enough.

The other thing I watched this past week I wanted to mention is Suzume no Tojimari. I am a bit late on checking it out as I wanted to wait and watch it together with my wife and our schedules don't often align in a way to watch a whole movie together (she works more on weekends while I work during the week). I had two main takeaways I wanted to discuss. First, the movie is absolutely gorgeous. If you are a fan of animation as an artistic endeavour, then this movie is right up your alley setting everything else aside.

The second thing is that I felt the story really let down the rest of the movie. Keeping this general and spoiler-free, there are too many things the story was trying to accomplish in too little time. So, it never really spent long enough on any particular story beat or explained things enough to make the viewer get invested. I have lots of thoughts about this, but don't have the energy to write it all out. Overall, and this might sound harsh, I thought Suzume was kind of like the anime version of Avatar (the movie). Everything about its production was stunning, but the plot didn't live up to the rest of the audio-visual sensory experience happening on screen.

I know that second take is kind of spicy given the overwhelmingly positive reception the movie has received, so happy to elaborate behind spoiler tags below.

@ram@lemmy.ca, @N3DSdude@lemmy.ml would it be possible to pin again?

I think that if they mess with his brother he could snap pretty easily. One of the only things we knew about Helck in the early part of the season is that he was supposed to have killed his brother. So, I fully expect the humans to force some kind of confrontation between Helck and Cless or just kill Cless and frame Helck so that Helck doesn't spread the truth about the demons.

I had to look up Yuzuki Family as that show was not even on my radar for this season. There are so many shows coming out each season that it is hard to keep up. On the flip side, that usually means that you can always find a couple shows that really click with you each season. It certainly sounds wholesome from the synopsis. Might be one to queue up when it's been a while since I talked with my brother.

Are you watching Trigun (1998) or Trigun Stampede (2023)? My wife loves Trigun and we are planning on watching it soon (working through another show right now). However, she was really put off by Stampede's art style and gave it a pass.

@N3DSdude@lemmy.ml @ram@lemmy.ca any chance this might get pinned so it doesn't get buried?

I agree that a weekly pinned thread where non-seasonal anime could be discussed would be great. I also watch some older shows and there isn't anywhere in this community currently to discuss them other than just creating a new post; which a lot of people like yourself tend to find a high barrier to entry.

I kind of like the voting before a season idea!

Same. Faced with the prospect of having to manually make episode posts going forward, I actually spun up a wiki for myself to more easily be able to copy paste all the markdown for each show involved in the posts.

I see what you are saying. The one thread/season would definitely cause some spoiler issues unless there were some strict moderation. Your idea caused me to think of something like a pinned megathread with actively airing shows and their episode thread links in a table. Then, you could have the bot post the discussion threads to a separate, dedicated, bot-run community that houses all the automated threads. This would leave /c/anime more clutter-free, even if there is little activity on a lot of shows.

For example, the megathread could have something like this for the actively airing shows:

Agreed. Miyo just traded the Saimori family for the Usuba. The only difference between the two really is that she isn't treated like a servant with the Usubas despite remaining a prisoner.

I think the first half of this show was really strong, but I feel a bit disappointed by the latter half. I think there is a version of the story in which Miyo's dreams could help her piece together her mother's backstory while simultaneously strengthening the bond with Kudo as they work together to overcome the burden these undeveloped powers place on her body.

Dreams can be an incredible narrative tool, but as far as we know, the dreams that she was experiencing didn't really have any narrative importance other than that they were supernatural and very disruptive. It just feels like a squandered opportunity if you want to make a character whose superpower is related to dreams and then the dreams aren't really used to further the story.

Kimiya about to go ultra instinct.

I get that this show is by no means a world-class storytelling experience, but the pacing has been wildly inconsistent so far. I have a high tolerance for trashy isekai, but this show has oscillated between what feels like filler episodes where nothing of note really happens (basically everything that has happened since he confronted the queen with the one exception of finding Liza) and skipping hugely impactful stuff (connecting to the internet of his old world happens off-screen? his traveling to the capital and confronting the queen flew by and the fallout was just narrated?).

This episode was weird as well. When the ED started playing I was surprised because the episode felt short, but then I noticed it was hardly halfway through the runtime. The whole second half the episode was comprised of what feels like omake chapters that have little to no story relevance. It just feels like they could have paced things better so that episodes reach a more logical and satisfying stopping point rather than fill so much time with omake content.